Hello,
I have been testing CorelDraw 2020 on my 2019 MacBook Pro 16" and noticed the performance is just abysmal compared to Illustrator/Photoshop. The option of using GPU acceleration is either broken or for some reason uses the integrated gpu. If that's the case then this is just ridiculous - basically this makes the software unusable for any serious work!
While testing I found that if I turn off the auto switching of GPU in my macOS preferences and basically force my machine to always use the Radeon Pro then there is a significant performance boost and both Draw and Photo Paint start to work as expected. My conclusion is that the option inside Draw/PhotoPaint to use GPU is either broken or not using the correct GPU at hand.
Considering this finding I want to know if there is any plan this issue to be addressed within version 2020 or not? If there is no such plan then I might start looking elsewhere for Adobe alternative.
Thanks!
Does your MacBookmuse AMD technology?
Yes sure, Apple uses AMD in all their laptops and desktops for discrete graphics.
Like I already mentioned - if I turn off the automatic switching of GPU and force MacOS to only use the AMD then both Draw and Photo Paint are super fast. This can only mean the use GPU option inside The Corel apps is not working or falsely is using the integrated Intel GPU.
I do donor walls, architectural signage, in my area no one uses Macs in that industry. I also do high end image editing, output high end digital and traditional print. I do not accept anything but image files and print ready PDF, zero native files anymore.
I got rid of my Macs over a decade ago so I'm not up to date with their internal l working, with that said for $1,800 I bought an I9 with a NVidia 6 gb video, a terabyte SSD, 3 terabyte secobdary drive and 64 GB of RAM. So it's very tough from a profitable creative standpoint to buy a Mac.
I did notice when I got the system about 6 months ago performance was really improved over my I7 but I dug into the standard BIOS and set the mainboard to a performance setting and noticed another 30% performance boost with my applications. Maybe the Mac can be looked at in that manner.
I have zero hope that Corel will change and now that Apple is going back to propriatary processors again the entire application world for them is going to be the usual mind field. Apple usually makes you update and trash all things that came before.
Actually I did almost the opposite. 6 moths ago switched completely from Windows because I noticed big shift in Microsoft's police towards consumers and prosumers. Ever since Windows 10 was announced the quality and consistency has dropped to a new low. Microsoft constantly fix bugs while creating/breaking new ones and most of the OS is a big mix of bloatware, useless builtin apps and layers over layers of legacy code.
I still keep my Dell Precision workstation with 2 Xeons 40 cores each along with 128Gb of ram and 2 AMD 7100 - even though these are very high specs I have had countless issues, performance issues, inconsistent behavior etc. Since Windows is the complete opposite to Apple I can argue that this is just as bad as changing to new platform and pushing users to upgrade. The fact that Windows 10 is a mess of UI/UX elements dating back to XP era, aging subsystem that puts priority on enterprise compatibility and not speed, consistency and user experience just got the better of me.
With that said you might be right about Corel and force me to check the Affinity apps just like many others....wonder why ;) Corel didn't capitalize on the mass exodus from Adobe in the last few years...
Windows 10 certainly moved into consumer BS as an operating system and updates are now more unpredictable but 99.9999% of all new properly written software and hardware just plugs in and works so it's not awful, just not perfect. If you can't keep a Windows 10 system running best if you try another profession or buy some good IT support.
Corel just coded to be usable on Mac and within 2 years will need to do it again. What do you think the chance of that working out is going to be?
I guess it depends on how many new Mac customers they got over the period. And hence my point that they are missing on real opportunities to gain from Adobe’s arrogance. I hope they stop ignoring our feedback and actually make their apps rock solid, fast and overall appealing. There is always the option of Affinity apps $50 each
You're a Mac guy so I'll ask, do you trust that Corel will recode for the new Mac processor correctly?
They recoded for 2019 and we'rec4 months into the 2020 release and that release hasn't addressed 15% of the problems they created in the 2019 release.
You are right unless they have some SP or hot fixes coming in the pipeline it’s unlikely things will change.
Worth mentioning is that there will be at least 2 year transition period which means Corel can still fix the existing versions and yet work on the new code.
If they don’t I just don’t see why they bothered coming back to Mac in the first place - just to show their software is great but lacks stability and performance.... not suitable for serious work...
David Milisock said:You're a Mac guy so I'll ask, do you trust that Corel will recode for the new Mac processor correctly?
As far as I know, Corel built CorelDraw for Mac using the latest macOS APIs, so recompiling for the new Apple processors should be as easy as enabling an option and rebuilding the app as a new Universal Binary.
From this point of view, they are in a better position than Adobe.
This sounds great on paper but unless they clean their act starting with v. 2020 I am afraid Affinity and Adobe will continue to dominate the Mac ecosystem.
I agree programming performance is awful and it's not about who dominates the Mac it's about if they even produce a viable application. If it's stable, runs snappy and the features actually work CorelDRAW will sell itself.
Right now 2020 is barely worth a $50 fee from a 2018 upgrade to 2020. If you're on a PC, AMD or Xeon platform, CorelDRAWS performance is slow at best to downright awful.
I don't own Macs any longer but I've not heard or read anything good about CorelDRAW 2020 on the Mac. Really in my area of graphics Macs are non starters, a 95% increase in workstation and 250% increase in service cost for lower performance is just bad business.
Affinity for professional print is crap, as long as you're doing web or digital print only you can get by as long as quality transparency in print does not matter.
I've been seriously researching Adobe alternatives because of a 2 contracts to do so and that research always crosses paths with platforms and the new Mac programming will be much more serious an issue than you think.
Apple will always have their user base but the most telling aspect of the installed Apple based is that over 30 years it's not moved very much. They sell phones and music their computers have not been going anywhere very quickly.